She might be out there already…

They stood beside each other, much of a height, just able to peer over the lower frame of the window.

“It’s frightening, but it won’t harm you—not here,” the Librarian said. “It’s changed over the last few wakes—more fundamental change than any of us have witnessed since it surrounded the Kalpa.”

There was a horizon of sorts—like the far line of the channel beyond the Tiers. But where the ceil would have faded off into shadow, something else rose up—a sky.The sky made no sense—a tight-scrunched bundle of fabric, its wrinkles burning with a dim, purple fire, dwindling here and there but starting up elsewhere like dying embers.

“It doesn’t like being looked at,” Jebrassy said.

“A fundamental truth. The Chaos is not fond of observers.”

Below the horizon and the wrinkled, burning sky, if he focused hard enough, Jebrassy could make out jumbles of shapes, what might have been faraway, broken buildings, old cities, or perhaps just piles of stone and rubble. He had no scale for comparison—how big, how high, how many were these things, spread out so strangely? How far to the line between “sky” and “ground”? His eyes couldn’t seem to focus—details presented themselves then flashed away, elusive as motes of dust. The Librarian held his shoulder. “This is what your female will soon be seeing.”

“Then she hasn’t left yet?”

“And you will join her. But first we must learn whether we have solved a great problem. Against this problem, I am, and always have been, as humble and troubled as one of your beasts of burden down in the basement Tiers.”

Jebrassy said, “You don’t know how stupid pedes can be.”

The Librarian touched his finger to his nose. “In my world, I can be justthat stupid. Look. Ask. I will try to describe and explain.”

“How big is it, out there?”

“In the Chaos, distance is difficult to measure or judge. That has been the chief obstacle to your pilgrims—how to get from where they think they are to where they think they want to be.”

“It looks confused,” Jebrassy said. “It isn’t finished—feels incomplete. Doesn’t want to be seen undressed.”

“A fair assessment. Though we should not ascribe our own motives to the Typhon. They are not the same—if the Typhon can even be said to have motive. In the simplest terms—applicable to our experience within the Kalpa—we are looking out over a thousand miles, horizon to horizon. Down there—look toward the closer regions just below—you can see a narrow gray circle, stretching out to a broader black border. You might be able to make out a kind of maze, and a low wall.”

Jebrassy followed the Librarian’s pointing finger and saw a gray curve surrounded by what might have been a black smudge of wall, two hand-spans out from the great rounded, shiny shapes immediately below—the word came to him, bions.

The tower rose from the middle bion, which looked damaged. The other two bions appeared to be in even worse condition.

“I’ve seen this before,” he murmured. “My visitor told me.” His face wrinkled in frustration, but the Librarian seemed to understand.

“Go on.”

Jebrassy tried to finish his thought. “There’s a shifting place…I think it’s called the zone of lies.”

“Very dangerous,” the Librarian said. “Many breeds have had their journeys ended there before fairly begun. I believe the Menders have improved your education and training since those times.”

“You’re talking about our lives,” Jebrassy said.

“No need to get testy. Tell me you aren’t already attracted to what you see.”

“I am!”Jebrassy shouted, and tried to turn away, but couldn’t. He was fascinated. He yearned, said almost in a whimper, “I always have been.”

“I have my inclinations, and you have yours. Right now we’re working together—but when you go out there, to join your mate, as you have dreamed, you will carry to her information no one else possesses. Information that might help you both survive, and succeed. And if you do not succeed, then my half an eternity of labor will pass away, without conclusion—without product—a failure.

“All that I am, then, rests on your small shoulders, young breed. The Typhon is absorbing the old universe, from beginning to end. Our time and history are being broken up, dissolved—look out the window. The Chaos is just beyond the border of the real, waiting.”

Jebrassy forced himself to look over the curved, darkened, jumbled landscape. Outside the zone of lies, great high shapes stood up against the Chaos, difficult to make out, as if surrounded by fog. Defenders.

“Only three threads connect us to the broken past that will soon be upon us—your female, who will soon travel into the Chaos; you, and one other, a driven being, forced to abandon all principle, who cares little for any sort of existence—but who must return.”

Jebrassy frowned, trying to retrieve an elusive memory of hatred and pity. The epitome tapped the crystal window with a white finger. “The lives of you and your dream-partners are strung like beads on the cosmos’s remaining threads—heading for a collision. If all goes well, that collision will happen in Nataraja. That is where you will go—where all marchers have tried to go. There is no other destination.

“You must succeed where Sangmer failed.”

Jebrassy thought of the books and stories that Grayne had guided them to. “You’re the one who put the shelves in the Tiers—aren’t you?” he asked.

“One of me,” the epitome said. “Not very long ago.”

“How long?” Jebrassy asked, defiant.

“What if I said a hundred million wakes—could you count them, remember them all, even begin to understand how long that is?”

Jebrassy tried to stare a challenge. Finally, he glanced aside. “No,” he said.

“We are adapted to our time as well as our space. Even this epitome can hardly conceive of a hundred million wakes without external assistance, so don’t be embarrassed. And it was longer ago than that.”

CHAPTER 66

The Border of the Real

She was always going to do this.

She would always be doing this.

Tiadba had wanted to join a march long before she met Jebrassy; long before Grayne had instructed her to recruit the young breed warrior, long before she fell in love. And long before she lost her warrior. And here she was, wearing a suit of supple orange armor, feeling no fear, only that ache of grief and loneliness that would never go away—and the realization that this was what she had been made to do. To leave the Tiers, the city itself, and cross over the border of the real, beyond the reach of the Kalpa’s great generators…

To cross the Chaos and see what lay on the other side.

Pahtun took Tiadba and Khren aside and told them they were group leaders. “I’ll go as far as I can with you. But I will not go beyond the zone of lies. I must return. Our final battle is upon us.”

Tiadba looked to Khren and saw that he was intent on the trainer’s words. No sign remained of Jebrassy’s buffoonish young friend. He, too, was always going to do this. She wondered: Had all breeds been made this way?

Assisted by the four escorts, the marchers prepared to roll out the small wheeled cart that carried their claves and two portable generators.

Pahtun got to his feet and repeated what he had said earlier, so often it was almost soothing in its familiarity. “The beacon from the Kalpa is perpetual. From its pulse you will always know where lies the city. There are moments when the Witness seems to interfere with the beacon—perhaps deliberately—but you will regain the signal if you persist. All your suits possess the means. There can be no communication sent tothe city, ever—you must not alert the Chaos to your presence. There are vigilants, of all sizes and strengths, always changing but constant in their watchfulness. The Chaos is hungry.”